Rocco Anthony Petrone (March 31, 1926 – August 24, 2006) was an American mechanical engineer, U.S. Army officer and NASA official.

[3] He also earned a master's degree in mechanical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1951, and later received an honorary doctorate from Rollins College.

[4] During two decades with the U.S. Army, Petrone took part in developing the Redstone rocket, the first U.S. ballistic missile and the vehicle used to launch America's first astronauts, Alan Shepard and Gus Grissom on their suborbital missions.

After his retirement from the Army in 1966 he continued to work for NASA as a civilian, being promoted to director of launch operations at KSC in July 1966.

In 1972, Petrone was assigned additional responsibilities as program director of the NASA portion of the joint United States / Soviet Union Apollo-Soyuz Test Project.

[2] From 1973 to 1974, Petrone served as the first non-German administrator of the Marshall Space Flight Center, after Wernher von Braun and Eberhard Rees.

[2] In 1975, Petrone retired from NASA and became the president and CEO of the National Center for Resource Recovery, a collaborative industry and labor initiative aimed at developing and promoting methods to recover materials and energy from solid waste.